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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27658874">Over All</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SloanGreyMercyDeath/pseuds/SloanGreyMercyDeath'>SloanGreyMercyDeath</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Criminal Minds (US TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, GNC JJ, JJ has some complicated feels about gender, it's good</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:44:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,368</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27658874</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SloanGreyMercyDeath/pseuds/SloanGreyMercyDeath</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The teacher says he did it because he likes her and that’s just what boys do. When she shoves him to the ground five minutes later, she learns that only boys are allowed to push. Girls are only allowed to fall.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>185</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Over All</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The world is not kind to girls. That’s a lesson that JJ learns young. She learns it when Michael Peterson shoves her off the top of the monkey bars during recess in the third grade. The fall knocks the wind out of her and she can only stare up at him like an overturned beetle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The teacher says he did it because he likes her and that’s just what boys do. When she shoves him to the ground five minutes later, she learns that only boys are allowed to push. Girls are only allowed to fall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael Peterson decides it’s his mission to make her recesses hell for the rest of the year. He yanks on her hair, chases her up into trees, tries to unzip the back of her homemade dresses. She becomes very good at hide and go seek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On graduation day, he follows her into the bathroom. He tries to kiss her. It’s the first time her rage gets the better of her. As he’s leaning in closer, she decides that if girls aren’t allowed to hit, then she doesn’t want to be a girl at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She breaks his nose with a perfectly aimed punch. Her knuckles sting for days, but it feels so </span>
  <em>
    <span>right </span>
  </em>
  <span>that she barely hears her mother’s lecture. JJ spends the conversation staring down at her hands as if she’s sorry, but she just can’t tear her eyes away from the hello kitty bandaid covering broken skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Girls are kind,” her mother is saying. “They’re nice, and they’re caring, and they don’t. Hit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do I have to be a girl?” JJ asks her quietly. Her wide blue eyes look at Ros, pleading for an answer she wants to hear. “Can’t I be something else?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The answer is no. Two days later, JJ gets her first period. She’s only 9, so young, but she gets her wish in a twisted way. She’s not a girl anymore - she’s a woman. It feels worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Middle school is just as terrible as everyone warned her it would be. Her hair grows long and her mom won’t let her cut it. Even when she starts playing soccer, coming home with mud and leaves covering the long strands, her mother just teaches her how to french braid. It’s something, but it’s not enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she turns 10, her sister takes her shopping for dresses. Everything they leave with has flowers, or lace, or pink, and she hates them. JJ has never liked looking so girly, but all the boys at school tell her she looks really pretty. It makes her hate them even more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In 6th grade, she meets a girl named Sara, who has short hair because of a gum accident. She wears overalls and mary janes and she likes horses as much as JJ does. They get close quickly, until JJ realizes that Sara likes horses because she wants a handsome prince to sweep her up and take her away. JJ likes horses because they have big teeth and their kicks can break your ribs. The friendship fizzles out when Sara gets a boyfriend four months later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>JJ is 11 when she realizes that she’s supposed to like boys. Ros has a boyfriend and Sara got a boyfriend and all the other girls at school </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>boyfriends. JJ doesn’t. She wants short hair and denim overalls and sharp teeth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ros isn’t around much that year, so JJ can’t ask her if some girls don’t like boys. She wants to ask her big sister if it’s normal to notice the way the sun brings out the red in Ally Miller’s brown hair, but then Ros is gone and JJ doesn’t really notice anything for a while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One day, when 7th grade is almost over, JJ loses a soccer game. She would have won, but the other team's goalie is huge and she just knocks the ball out of the way. Before JJ can think, she’s sprinting across the field, tackling the girl to the ground, and punching her until she cries. Their faces are so close as JJ yanks at her hair and, for one slow, long second, JJ sees something in the goalie’s eyes that makes her stomach turn pleasantly. Then, she’s getting dragged away by the coach and her knuckles are bleeding again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her mother grounds her. JJ doesn’t care. Being grounded means she doesn’t have to go to the stupid dance and wear the frilly pink dress her mother made for her. It would look pretty on another girl, but JJ hates it. The night of the dance, JJ takes a pair of scissors and cuts her hair off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her mother screams when she sees her and makes a phone call to a friend and then JJ is in a salon chair at 9pm. Her mom and her mom’s friend manage to salvage the haircut into a cut bob that hangs just past her ears. As JJ looks into the mirror, she hates it. It’s still girly and cute and she wanted something rough and dangerous.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two years later, on the first day of high school, she walks into her 9th grade math class and sees the goalie again. JJ’s hair hangs over her shoulders now, so she always ties it back. Now that she’s 14, she has some control over her wardrobe and she wears dungarees and t-shirts and sports bras and black sneakers. The goalie is wearing denim overalls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>JJ sits next to her and apologizes. Even though it’s been two years, she still feels kind of bad. The goalie’s name is Jenna Waters and she has the most beautiful green eyes that JJ has ever seen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They sneak out to the woods most nights, too wrapped up in each other to worry about The Tall Man. Jenna’s kisses taste like danger and strawberry lipgloss and JJ knows that girls don’t kiss girls, but she’s never really been a girl at all. Jenna moves away a year later and JJ never sees her again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>High school is just a series of days and weeks and years that JJ has to get through to get out of her tiny town. She excels at soccer, gets straight As, memorizes the town’s map so she knows every route out. Her hair gets long again and this time she lets it. There’s no point fighting what feels like an inevitablity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The girls around her like make-up, so JJ compromises and wears brown eyeliner and clear lipgloss. They like getting their nails done, so she gets pale pink nailpolish that’s barely visible. They have sleepovers and she always sleeps in the living room, away from the others. She wears t-shirts over her bathing suits, thick leggings under her dresses, ballet slippers instead of heels. She does her best.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>College changes everything for her. She’s suddenly in a city, surrounded by people who look nothing like her or the girls she grew up with. Her roommate has a nose piercing, the girl two doors down has tattoos, and her academic advisor has a </span>
  <em>
    <span>girlfriend. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It feels wrong and right and overwhelming and JJ has no one to ask all her questions to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She loses herself a little bit in college. Without the pressure to be perfect, to escape, she falls into the black hole of almost belonging. Her new friends take her to parties where they get drunk and accidentally kiss girls. On a dare, JJ gets her eyebrow pierced, but she takes it out the next day. She wakes up several times with a girl in her bed, heartbroken that she has to get so drunk to do it that she can never remember.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She </span>
  <em>
    <span>doesn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>date the hostess at her waitressing job. Bethany O’Brian, who goes by Bob, has a crew cut and wears men’s dress pants and penny loafers and looks at her with knowing eyes. They don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>date, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but they sleep together sober and JJ is ok with that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bob lets JJ try on her clothes and JJ almost cries. She’s exhausted by pencil skirts and peter pan collars. Bob calls her ‘Handsome’ and then JJ does cry. She doesn’t know why, but it all feels like too much. She quits her job the next day, graduates, and moves to DC for grad school.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Georgetown isn’t worth remembering until she hears Rossi speak and joins the FBI academy. For the first time, she’s allowed to fight and get strong and lose her feminine curves. It’s hard to do, and she keeps most of them, but there’s still the feeling that she’s standing on a precipice high above the place where she wants to be and it would only take a single step to fall. The thought terrifies her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She starts wearing her hair down again, retreating into sweater sets and kitten heels. Her job as a media liaison requires her to keep up appearances and she uses that as her excuse. She’s not scared. She’s not running from herself. She just realizes that she’s a girl after all. Nothing wrong with that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Emily Prentiss sees right through her. The black-haired woman looks at her pink blazer, her cream-colored skirt, her long blonde hair and knows immediately that all of it is wrong. JJ isn’t sure </span>
  <em>
    <span>how </span>
  </em>
  <span>she knows, but she’s happy that she does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They only talk during work at first, casual and safe and light. Emily asks questions about her hometown, about dating, about where she shops. It doesn’t seem like a big deal and JJ answers freely. In return, Emily speaks openly about kissing diplomats’ daughters, her goth phase, that one year in college when she got a girlfriend’s name tattooed on her hip. JJ is captivated by her exciting life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a while of girls’ nights with Penelope, game nights with the boys, sleepovers where they shared a bed and both pretended to sleep, Emily kisses her in the Bureau’s parking garage. It’s chaste, like she’s nervous she’s gone too far. JJ loses her mind and they have sex for the first time in the back of Emily’s Lexus where anyone could catch them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Emily never calls her ‘pretty’ or ‘gorgeous’ or ‘cute’. As if she knows JJ’s mind, it’s always ‘Hello, Handsome’ or ‘You’re so </span>
  <em>
    <span>strong, </span>
  </em>
  <span>baby.’ JJ does her best to give that love back. Every other word from her mouth is thanks or praise or wonder. She doesn’t know where Emily came from, but she knows she’s been waiting her whole life for this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One night, they call Penelope, both drunk on wine and each other. She comes over, laughing immediately when she sees that they’re both naked and still asked her to bring shearing scissors. She cuts JJ’s hair in the bathroom while Emily looks on with wide, impressed eyes. JJ doesn’t know why she took so long to tell Garcia that not all girls are girls and that JJ was one of those mis-matched people.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Garcia knows all about it of course and promises to talk logistics when JJ is sober enough to spell logistics. For now, she just cuts JJ’s hair until it’s exactly the boy band look she’s always envied. Then, she gives Emily bangs so she can feel included.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>JJ only has to take one look at herself in the mirror to know that this was the best decision she’s ever made. Tears roll down her cheeks, but before Emily can comfort her, JJ is on her, knocking her into the tub and kissing her breathless. Penelope takes that as her cue to leave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The team takes it better than they could have ever hoped for. Morgan is ecstatic that he and JJ can have bro nights and watch sports and drink craft beer and talk about ladies. JJ resists the urge to tell him that they already do that because now it’s a </span>
  <em>
    <span>bro night </span>
  </em>
  <span>and not just hanging out. They bite their lip when he tells them that they have to go sneaker shopping together and buy cool clothing. He tells them that they’ll work out together and get really strong, so JJ can punch anyone they want. Hotch tells them that working out is fine, but punching is not allowed and no it’s not a gender thing, it’s a workplace etiquette thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spencer says, “I’ve always wanted a brother!” and then panics when JJ bursts into tears. Emily assures him that they’re happy tears and that, yes, he can hug JJ. Spencer starts listing off books and movies that are crucial to “developing a socially acceptable masculine persona. Trust me, JJ. They’re so good! That’s how I learned how to be a boy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When JJ finally manages to extract themself from Spencer’s vice grip, Rossi jokes that this is why JJ had always been immune to his charms. He’s magic with the ladies, but everyone else doesn’t get his Italian flirting style. Morgan tells him that ladies don’t get it either. Emily has never thrown herself at Rossi.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The whole team shudders at the thought, but then JJ and Rossi are hugging and it feels right. They tell him about how it was his talk at Georgetown that put them back onto the right path and then </span>
  <em>
    <span>he’s </span>
  </em>
  <span>crying like a proud dad. JJ presses a kiss to his rough cheek and looks at Hotch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their Unit Chief looks a little bit confused, but he’s always had a soft spot for JJ. He’s not quite sure why a haircut is such a big deal, but he smiles at them and nods and says, “whatever you need, just let me know” and then they’re hugging him like a kid who’s been accepted by their parent. Hotch hugs them back, looking with bewilderment at Emily who just waves her hand and mouths, ‘we’ll talk later.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>JJ doesn’t really know how all of this will change their life, if any of it will change at all, but they finally feel like this is the start of something, like they’re not sitting on the bench, but actually playing the game. They have a family that loves them and a job they love. JJ doesn’t cry again for a long time. Well, except for when Emily buys them a pair of denim overalls.</span>
</p>
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